'

Amelie Bellion

Eco-poetic imaginaries and consumer aesthetic resistance as means for questionning (the relations to) the urbanocene

We investigate the Cottagecore trend. A real hit on social networks, this highly aesthetic movement promotes bucolic, poetic imagination, Nature and the romantic life and aesthetics of the literary works like those of L. M. Mongtomery or Jane Austen. It seems to reveal the existence of a complex consumer subculture structured around a relatively atypical ethos : a close to nature, pastoral and slow living, a priori far from the urban life but extremely embedded in the technoculture. We study the paradox of this « art-de-vivre » and aesthetic movement, totally smitten to nature and slow life, and, at the same time, extremely embedded in the technoculture and the urbanocene tools such as internet and social media. Using an exploratory netnography (ethnography on internet) (Kozinets, 2010), we experimented a form of analysis inspired by the collage method (Chaplin and Roedder John, 2005), which we update analyzing the public artistic creations posted by consumers on the Shuffles application.

A form of aesthetic-poetic consumer resistance is identified: a gentle approach of symbolic and aesthetic resistance, which takes the form of an art of living based on the defense of ecopoetic narratives and fictions (cf collages in appendices). As a theoretical perspective borrowed from literature research, ecopoetics is concerned with the aesthetic way in which the relationship between man and nature is described (Blanc et al., 2008). The naturalistic and pastoral imaginary of the Cottagecore aesthetic seems to be used by consumers as a resource to fuel a rhetoric that maintains an atypical and ambivalent relationship with the urbanocene. Cottagecore rhetoric distances the urban and modern world: “I could never live in a city or even a town.  country girl all my life” (nancyyow4768, 2023)¹; “let's go leave thishell of a world and fly into a cottagecore fantasy together” (Girldreamery, 2022)². And, sometimes, this rhetoric creates a dialogue - even a dialogism (in Bakhtin's sense) with him, calling for negotiation with urban space to create a link with nature: “Live in an outer borough

- N.Y.C. (worked in Manhattan) and I am so in a relaxed phase of my life. Simple joys! Simple hobbies! Planting, cooking, decorating, spending time outdoors, a lot of peace and gratitude. Sometimes I have to tell myself SLOW DOWN. Old city habits are ingrained! (…)” (@karenpny,2023³).

This form of resistance leads to the creation of: i) a space of fiction (Belk and Costa, 1998), in which a form of “refuge fiction” is used by consumers ; it acts as a proposal for transient escape in a hybrid spatio-temporal framework; ii) a space of frictions, within which consumers question and translate their relationship to the urbanocene.This research could enrich our knowledge of the aesthetic and artistic forms of consumer activism, and of the role Art can play in questioning the relationship between nature and the urbanocene.

Anna Croft

Co-Creative Adaptations: Leveraging Arts-based Approaches for Procedural Justice in Urban Climate Adaptation

This study investigates how arts-based co-creative approaches can enhance procedural justice in urban climate adaptation within Dutch cities. The objective is to understand how key stakeholders perceive integrating artistic practices into the decision-making processes of urban governance. As cities worldwide grapple with the escalating impacts of climate change, effective adaptation interventions to ensure urban safety are critical. As the 2024 Environment and Planning Act demonstrates, participation has become a central ambition in Dutch climate adaptation strategies. Co-creation has emerged as a transformative approach for facilitating equitable participation processes capable of addressing urban socio-ecological inequities exacerbated by climate change. This research starts from the premise that artistic methods in co-creative processes hold significant potential for enhancing procedural justice. However, it postulates that stakeholder perceptions are a critical determinant of the effectiveness of such interdisciplinary collaboration within existing urban governance structures. This research employs a mixed-qualitative approach, combining interviews with municipal and artistic stakeholders operating in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht with document analysis of climate adaptation strategies from these cities. This research reveals that considering artists as stakeholders in co-creative processes for climate adaptation misrepresents their role, which is to provide space for diverse and interdependent perspectives. Arts-based methods effectively engage vulnerable groups by addressing their subjective and intersectional vulnerabilities, transforming public participation into opportunities for social innovation. Despite complementing the ambitions conveyed in municipal strategies, key perception differences between municipal actors and artists present barriers to enhancing procedural justice in urban governance processes. Municipal actors often view art as a one-way tool and resist delegating power, while artists emphasize the need for sustained engagement and interrogation of responses. Addressing these confrontations in perception is crucial for progressing toward equitable and effective climate adaptation. Future research should include perceptions from a broader range of stakeholders, such as community members and business leaders, and connect procedural justice in adaptation strategies to other justice dimensions, including recognitional, distributive, and restorative justice.